Dubai: With its 15th hotel opening in Dubai this year, Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide is looking to have a robust presence in the UAE market over the coming years. And a strong representation of that would include having a significant presence in the Dubai World Central (DWC) area, the site for World Expo 2020, according to Frits van Paasschen, the company’s President and chief executive.
The US hotel major is looking to have its mid-scale hotel brands present at DWC.
“We are especially looking to have our mid-range brand [there], such as Four Points by Sheraton, Aloft and Element [which has yet to enter the Middle East market]. Those are the opportunities in Dubai that we think are quite promising,” van Paasschen told Gulf News in an interview on Monday.
“As it is when we look at the pipeline of confirmed projects underway in the Middle East, we will be doubling our representation of those brands, but particularly in Dubai, because we already have such strong representation at the high end.
“So especially looking forward to Expo 2020 here, the addition of a portfolio of those hotels in different sub-markets across Dubai would be something that is quite possible,” he added.
It, however, remains to be seen if Starwood would have a portfolio of brands present at the site or just one hotel. While not divulging details, van Paasschen said: “One gauge for this is, if you think of it as an entire new market, given that we will soon have 15 hotels here [in Dubai] with more underway, we wouldn’t go to an entire new market like this [DWC] and be satisfied if we had one hotel.”
Mid-scale hotel brands
While Starwood is tilting towards mid-scale hotel brands at DWC, it is not ruling out its luxury hotel brands being present there.
“You cannot rule it out,” said Guido De Wilde, Vice President and Regional Director for Starwood Hotels and Resorts in the Middle East. “Looking at the whole DWC area and the Al Maktoum International airport, there are many opportunities there because that is going to be practically a new destination within Dubai. So we have demand for some of our brands. But we need to assess that whole area a bit further and we will then define what the right brand is to go there. We still have a bit more analysis to do.”
Quizzed on whether the company is already in active talks with the concerned authorities for hotel projects at DWC, van Paasschen said: “We generally don’t comment about talks that are under way.”
Continuing to strengthen its presence in Dubai, Starwood will open a new Sheraton hotel on Shaikh Zayed Road this September, its 15th property in Dubai, the company’s second largest hotel market behind New York City, which has 21 hotels.
With a total of 23 hotels in the UAE at present, Starwood says, the country is its largest growth market in the Middle East region with plans to have more than 30 hotels by 2017.
